UILabel text margin

Question

I'm looking to set the left inset/margin of a UILabel and can't find a method to do so. The label has a background set so just changing its origin won't do the trick. It would be ideal to inset the text by 10px or so on the left hand side.

Answer 1

I solved this by subclassing UILabel and overriding drawTextInRect: like this:

- (void)drawTextInRect:(CGRect)rect {
    UIEdgeInsets insets = {0, 5, 0, 5};
    [super drawTextInRect:UIEdgeInsetsInsetRect(rect, insets)];
}

Swift 3.1:

override func drawText(in rect: CGRect) {
    let insets = UIEdgeInsets.init(top: 0, left: 5, bottom: 0, right: 5)
    super.drawText(in: UIEdgeInsetsInsetRect(rect, insets))
}

Swift 4.2.1:

override func drawText(in rect: CGRect) {
    let insets = UIEdgeInsets(top: 0, left: 5, bottom: 0, right: 5)
    super.drawText(in: rect.inset(by: insets))
}

As you might have gathered, this is an adaptation of tc.'s answer. It has two advantages over that one:

1. there's no need to trigger it by sending a sizeToFit message
2. it leaves the label frame alone - handy if your label has a background and you don't want that to shrink